Concurrent incremental garbage collector with a card table summarizing modified reference locations

ABSTRACT

A concurrent incremental garbage collector where tracking and summarization of modified references is concurrent with application operations. A card table is arranged with write barriers so that an application&#39;s modification of objects in memory cards are memorialized in the card table. The collector performs an atomic operation, e.g., a compare-and-swap (CAS), on the card table to detect modified or written to objects. Card table indicators of dirtied cards are reset or emptied and the corresponding dirtied cards are scanned for the modifications and the remembered sets updated. Another CAS is performed on the same card table and if any dirtied cards are indicated the collector preserves the card table with the dirtied indicators and operates on a distant card table. If the CAS succeeds no modifications were made and the collector operates on the next scheduled card table group.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention is directed to memory management. It particularlyconcerns what has come to be known as “garbage collection.”

2. Background Information

In the field of computer systems, considerable effort has been expendedon the task of allocating memory to data objects. For the purposes ofthis discussion, the term object refers to a data structure representedin a computer system's memory. Other terms sometimes used for the sameconcept are record and structure. An object may be identified by areference, a relatively small amount of information that can be used toaccess the object. A reference can be represented as a “pointer” or a“machine address,” which may require, for instance, only sixteen,thirty-two, or sixty-four bits of information, although there are otherways to represent a reference.

In some systems, which are usually known as “object oriented,” objectsmay have associated methods, which are routines that can be invoked byreference to the object. They also may belong to a class, which is anorganizational entity that may contain method code or other informationshared by all objects belonging to that class. In the discussion thatfollows, though, the term object will not be limited to such structures;it will additionally include structures with which methods and classesare not associated.

The invention to be described below is applicable to systems thatallocate memory to objects dynamically. Not all systems employ dynamicallocation. In some computer languages, source programs must be sowritten that all objects to which the program's variables refer arebound to storage locations at compile time. This storage-allocationapproach, sometimes referred to as “static allocation,” is the policytraditionally used by the Fortran programming language, for example.

Even for compilers that are thought of as allocating objects onlystatically, of course, there is often a certain level of abstraction tothis binding of objects to storage locations. Consider the typicalcomputer system 10 depicted in FIG. 1, for example. Data, andinstructions for operating on them, that a microprocessor 11 uses mayreside in on-board cache memory or be received from further cache memory12, possibly through the mediation of a cache controller 13. Thatcontroller 13 can in turn receive such data from system read/writememory (“RAM”) 14 through a RAM controller 15 or from various peripheraldevices through a system bus 16. The memory space made available to anapplication program may be “virtual” in the sense that it may actuallybe considerably larger than RAM 14 provides. So the RAM contents will beswapped to and from a system disk 17.

Additionally, the actual physical operations performed to access some ofthe most-recently visited parts of the process's address space oftenwill actually be performed in the cache 12 or in a cache on boardmicroprocessor 11 rather than on the RAM 14, with which those cachesswap data and instructions just as RAM 14 and system disk 17 do witheach other.

A further level of abstraction results from the fact that an applicationwill often be run as one of many processes operating concurrently withthe support of an underlying operating system. As part of that system'smemory management, the application's memory space may be moved amongdifferent actual physical locations many times in order to allowdifferent processes to employ shared physical memory devices. That is,the location specified in the application's machine code may actuallyresult in different physical locations at different times because theoperating system adds different offsets to themachine-language-specified location.

Despite these expedients, the use of static memory allocation in writingcertain long-lived applications makes it difficult to restrict storagerequirements to the available memory space. Abiding by space limitationsis easier when the platform provides for dynamic memory allocation,i.e., when memory space to be allocated to a given object is determinedonly at run time.

Dynamic allocation has a number of advantages, among which is that therun-time system is able to adapt allocation to run-time conditions. Forexample, the programmer can specify that space should be allocated for agiven object only in response to a particular run-time condition. TheC-language library function malloc( ) is often used for this purpose.Conversely, the programmer can specify conditions under which memorypreviously allocated to a given object can be reclaimed for reuse. TheC-language library function free( ) results in such memory reclamation.

Because dynamic allocation provides for memory reuse, it facilitatesgeneration of large or long-lived applications, which over the course oftheir lifetimes may employ objects whose total memory requirements wouldgreatly exceed the available memory resources if they were bound tomemory locations statically.

Particularly for long-lived applications, though, allocation andreclamation of dynamic memory must be performed carefully. If theapplication fails to reclaim unused memory—or, worse, loses track of theaddress of a dynamically allocated segment of memory—its memoryrequirements will grow over time to exceed the system's availablememory. This kind of error is known as a “memory leak.”

Another kind of error occurs when an application reclaims memory forreuse even though it still maintains a reference to that memory. If thereclaimed memory is reallocated for a different purpose, the applicationmay inadvertently manipulate the same memory in multiple inconsistentways. This kind of error is known as a “dangling reference,” because anapplication should not retain a reference to a memory location once thatlocation is reclaimed. Explicit dynamic-memory management by usinginterfaces like malloc( )/free( ) often leads to these problems.

A way of reducing the likelihood of such leaks and related errors is toprovide memory-space reclamation in a more-automatic manner. Techniquesused by systems that reclaim memory space automatically are commonlyreferred to as “garbage collection.”Garbage collectors operate byreclaiming space that they no longer consider “reachable.” Staticallyallocated objects represented by a program's global variables arenormally considered reachable throughout a program's life. Such objectsare not ordinarily stored in the garbage collector's managed memoryspace, but they may contain references to dynamically allocated objectsthat are, and such objects are considered reachable. Clearly, an objectreferred to in the processor's call stack is reachable, as is an objectreferred to by register contents. And an object referred to by anyreachable object is also reachable.

The use of garbage collectors is advantageous because, whereas aprogrammer working on a particular sequence of code can perform his taskcreditably in most respects with only local knowledge of the applicationat any given time, memory allocation and reclamation require a globalknowledge of the program. Specifically, a programmer dealing with agiven sequence of code does tend to know whether some portion of memoryis still in use for that sequence of code, but it is considerably moredifficult for him to know what the rest of the application is doing withthat memory. By tracing references from some conservative notion of a“root set,” e.g., global variables, registers, and the call stack,automatic garbage collectors obtain global knowledge in a methodicalway. By using a garbage collector, the programmer is relieved of theneed to worry about the application's global state and can concentrateon local-state issues, which are more manageable. The result isapplications that are more robust, having no dangling references andfewer memory leaks.

Garbage-collection mechanisms can be implemented by various parts andlevels of a computing system. One approach is simply to provide them aspart of a batch compiler's output. Consider FIG. 2's simplebatch-compiler operation, for example. A computer system executes inaccordance with compiler object code and therefore acts as a compiler20. The compiler object code is typically stored on a medium such asFIG. 1's system disk 17 or some other machine-readable medium, and it isloaded into RAM 14 to configure the computer system to act as acompiler. In some cases, though, the compiler object code's persistentstorage may instead be provided in a server system remote from themachine that performs the compiling. The electrical signals that carrythe digital data by which the computer systems exchange that code areexamples of the kinds of electromagnetic signals by which the computerinstructions can be communicated. Others are radio waves, microwaves,and both visible and invisible light.

The input to the compiler is the application source code, and the endproduct of the compiler process is application object code. This objectcode defines an application 21, which typically operates on input suchas mouse clicks, etc., to generate a display or some other type ofoutput. This object code implements the relationship that the programmerintends to specify by his application source code. In one approach togarbage collection, the compiler 20, without the programmer's explicitdirection, additionally generates code that automatically reclaimsunreachable memory space.

Even in this simple case, though, there is a sense in which theapplication does not itself provide the entire garbage collector.Specifically, the application will typically call upon the underlyingoperating system's memory-allocation functions. And the operating systemmay in turn take advantage of various hardware that lends itselfparticularly to use in garbage collection. So even a very simple systemmay disperse the garbage-collection mechanism over a number ofcomputer-system layers.

To get some sense of the variety of system components that can be usedto implement garbage collection, consider FIG. 3's example of a morecomplex way in which various levels of source code can result in themachine instructions that a processor executes. In the FIG. 3arrangement, the human applications programmer produces source code 22written in a high-level language. A compiler 23 typically converts thatcode into “class files.” These files include routines written ininstructions, called “byte codes” 24, for a “virtual machine” thatvarious processors can be software-configured to emulate. Thisconversion into byte codes is almost always separated in time from thosecodes' execution, so FIG. 3 divides the sequence into a “compile-timeenvironment” 25 separate from a “run-time environment” 26, in whichexecution occurs. One example of a high-level language for whichcompilers are available to produce such virtual-machine instructions isthe Java™ programming language. (Java is a trademark or registeredtrademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., in the United States and othercountries.)

Most typically, the class files' byte-code routines are executed by aprocessor under control of a virtual-machine process 27. That processemulates a virtual machine from whose instruction set the byte codes aredrawn. As is true of the compiler 23, the virtual-machine process 27 maybe specified by code stored on a local disk or some othermachine-readable medium from which it is read into FIG. 1's RAM 14 toconfigure the computer system to implement the garbage collector andotherwise act as a virtual machine. Again, though, that code'spersistent storage may instead be provided by a server system remotefrom the processor that implements the virtual machine, in which casethe code would be transmitted electrically or optically to thevirtual-machine-implementing processor.

In some implementations, much of the virtual machine's action inexecuting these byte codes is most like what those skilled in the artrefer to as “interpreting,” so FIG. 3 depicts the virtual machine asincluding an “interpreter” 28 for that purpose. In addition to orinstead of running an interpreter, many virtual-machine implementationsactually compile the byte codes concurrently with the resultant objectcode's execution, so FIG. 3 depicts the virtual machine as additionallyincluding a “just-in-time” compiler 29. We will refer to thejust-in-time compiler and the interpreter together as “executionengines” since they are the methods by which byte code can be executed.

Now, some of the functionality that source-language constructs specifycan be quite complicated, requiring many machine-language instructionsfor their implementation. One quite-common example is a source-languageinstruction that calls for 64-bit arithmetic on a 32-bit machine. Moregermane to the present invention is the operation of dynamicallyallocating space to a new object; the allocation of such objects must bemediated by the garbage collector.

In such situations, the compiler may produce “inline” code to accomplishthese operations. That is, all object-code instructions for carrying outa given source-code-prescribed operation will be repeated each time thesource code calls for the operation. But inlining runs the risk that“code bloat” will result if the operation is invoked at many source-codelocations.

The natural way of avoiding this result is instead to provide theoperation's implementation as a procedure, i.e., a single code sequencethat can be called from any location in the program. In the case ofcompilers, a collection of procedures for implementing many types ofsource-code-specified operations is called a runtime system for thelanguage. The execution engines and the runtime system of a virtualmachine are designed together so that the engines “know” whatruntime-system procedures are available in the virtual machine (and onthe target system if that system provides facilities that are directlyusable by an executing virtual-machine program.) So, for example, thejust-in-time compiler 29 may generate native code that includes calls tomemory-allocation procedures provided by the virtual machine's runtimesystem. These allocation routines may in turn invoke garbage-collectionroutines of the runtime system when there is not enough memory availableto satisfy an allocation. To represent this fact, FIG. 3 includes block30 to show that the compiler's output makes calls to the runtime systemas well as to the operating system 31, which consists of procedures thatare similarly system-resident but are not compiler-dependent.

Although the FIG. 3 arrangement is a popular one, it is by no meansuniversal, and many further implementation types can be expected.Proposals have even been made to implement the virtual machine 27'sbehavior in a hardware processor, in which case the hardware itselfwould provide some or all of the garbage-collection function.

The arrangement of FIG. 3 differs from FIG. 2 in that the compiler 23for converting the human programmer's code does not contribute toproviding the garbage-collection function; that results largely from thevirtual machine 27's operation. Those skilled in that art will recognizethat both of these organizations are merely exemplary, and many modernsystems employ hybrid mechanisms, which partake of the characteristicsof traditional compilers and traditional interpreters both.

The invention to be described below is applicable independently ofwhether a batch compiler, a just-in-time compiler, an interpreter, orsome hybrid is employed to process source code. In the remainder of thisapplication, therefore, we will use the term compiler to refer to anysuch mechanism, even if it is what would more typically be called aninterpreter.

In short, garbage collectors can be implemented in a wide range ofcombinations of hardware and/or software. As is true of most of thegarbage-collection techniques described in the literature, the inventionto be described below is applicable to most such systems.

By implementing garbage collection, a computer system can greatly reducethe occurrence of memory leaks and other software deficiencies in whichhuman programming frequently results. But it can also have significantadverse performance effects if it is not implemented carefully. Todistinguish the part of the program that does “useful” work from thatwhich does the garbage collection, the term mutator is sometimes used indiscussions of these effects; from the collector's point of view, whatthe mutator does is mutate active data structures' connectivity.

Some garbage-collection approaches rely heavily on interleavinggarbage-collection steps among mutator steps. In one type ofgarbage-collection approach, for instance, the mutator operation ofwriting a reference is followed immediately by garbage-collector stepsused to maintain a reference count in that object's header, and code forsubsequent new-object storage includes steps for finding space occupiedby objects whose reference count has fallen to zero. Obviously, such anapproach can slow mutator operation significantly.

Other approaches therefore interleave very few garbage-collector-relatedinstructions into the main mutator process but instead interrupt it fromtime to time to perform garbage-collection cycles, in which the garbagecollector finds unreachable objects and reclaims their memory space forreuse. Such an approach will be assumed in discussing FIG. 4's depictionof a simple garbage-collection operation. Within the memory spaceallocated to a given application is a part 40 managed by automaticgarbage collection. In the following discussion, this will be referredto as the “heap,” although in other contexts that term refers to alldynamically allocated memory. During the course of the application'sexecution, space is allocated for various objects 42, 44, 46, 48, and50. Typically, the mutator allocates space within the heap by invokingthe garbage collector, which at some level manages access to the heap.Basically, the mutator asks the garbage collector for a pointer to aheap region where it can safely place the object's data. The garbagecollector keeps track of the fact that the thus-allocated region isoccupied. It will refrain from allocating that region in response to anyother request until it determines that the mutator no longer needs theregion allocated to that object.

Garbage collectors vary as to which objects they consider reachable andunreachable. For the present discussion, though, an object will beconsidered “reachable” if it is referred to, as object 42 is, by areference in the root set 52. The root set consists of reference valuesstored in the mutator's threads' call stacks, the CPU registers, andglobal variables outside the garbage-collected heap. An object is alsoreachable if it is referred to, as object 46 is, by another reachableobject (in this case, object 42). Objects that are not reachable can nolonger affect the program, so it is safe to re-allocate the memoryspaces that they occupy.

A typical approach to garbage collection is therefore to identify allreachable objects and reclaim any previously allocated memory that thereachable objects do not occupy. A typical garbage collector mayidentify reachable objects by tracing references from the root set 52.For the sake of simplicity, FIG. 4 depicts only one reference from theroot set 52 into the heap 40. (Those skilled in the art will recognizethat there are many ways to identify references, or at least datacontents that may be references.) The collector notes that the root setpoints to object 42, which is therefore reachable, and that reachableobject 42 points to object 46, which therefore is also reachable. Butthose reachable objects point to no other objects, so objects 44, 48,and 50 are all unreachable, and their memory space may be reclaimed.This may involve, say, placing that memory space in a list of freememory blocks.

To avoid excessive heap fragmentation, some garbage collectorsadditionally relocate reachable objects. FIG. 5 shows a typicalapproach. The heap is partitioned into two halves, hereafter called“semi-spaces.” For one garbage-collection cycle, all objects areallocated in one semi-space 54, leaving the other semi-space 56 free.When the garbage-collection cycle occurs, objects identified asreachable are “evacuated” to the other semi-space 56, so all ofsemi-space 54 is then considered free. Once the garbage-collection cyclehas occurred, all new objects are allocated in the lower semi-space 56until yet another garbage-collection cycle occurs, at which time thereachable objects are evacuated back to the upper semi-space 54.

Although this relocation requires the extra steps of copying thereachable objects and updating references to them, it tends to be quiteefficient, since most new objects quickly become unreachable, so most ofthe current semi-space is actually garbage. That is, only a relativelyfew, reachable objects need to be relocated, after which the entiresemi-space contains only garbage and can be pronounced free forreallocation.

Now, a collection cycle can involve following all reference chains fromthe basic root set—i.e., from inherently reachable locations such as thecall stacks, class statics and other global variables, and registers—andreclaiming all space occupied by objects not encountered in the process.And the simplest way of performing such a cycle is to interrupt themutator to provide a collector interval in which the entire cycle isperformed before the mutator resumes. For certain types of applications,this approach to collection-cycle scheduling is acceptable and, in fact,highly efficient.

For many interactive and real-time applications, though, this approachis not acceptable. The delay in mutator operation that the collectioncycle's execution causes can be annoying to a user and can prevent areal-time application from responding to its environment with therequired speed. In some applications, choosing collection timesopportunistically can reduce this effect. Collection intervals can beinserted when an interactive mutator reaches a point at which it awaitsuser input, for instance.

So it may often be true that the garbage-collection operation's effecton performance can depend less on the total collection time than on whencollections actually occur. But another factor that often is even moredeterminative is the duration of any single collection interval, i.e.,how long the mutator must remain quiescent at any one time. In aninteractive system, for instance, a user may never noticehundred-millisecond interruptions for garbage collection, whereas mostusers would find interruptions lasting for two seconds to be annoying.

The cycle may therefore be divided up among a plurality of collectorintervals. When a collection cycle is divided up among a plurality ofcollection intervals, it is only after a number of intervals that thecollector will have followed all reference chains and be able toidentify as garbage any objects not thereby reached. This approach ismore complex than completing the cycle in a single collection interval;the mutator will usually modify references between collection intervals,so the collector must repeatedly update its view of the reference graphin the midst of the collection cycle. To make such updates practical,the mutator must communicate with the collector to let it know whatreference changes are made between intervals.

An even more complex approach, which some systems use to eliminatediscrete pauses or maximize resource-use efficiency, is to execute themutator and collector in concurrent execution threads. Most systems thatuse this approach use it for most but not all of the collection cycle;the mutator is usually interrupted for a short collector interval, inwhich a part of the collector cycle takes place without mutation.

Independent of whether the collection cycle is performed concurrentlywith mutator operation, is completed in a single interval, or extendsover multiple intervals is the question of whether the cycle iscomplete, as has tacitly been assumed so far, or is instead“incremental.” In incremental collection, a collection cycle constitutesonly an increment of collection: the collector does not follow allreference chains from the basic root set completely. Instead, itconcentrates on only a portion, or collection set, of the heap.Specifically, it identifies every collection-set object referred to by areference chain that extends into the collection set from outside of it,and it reclaims the collection-set space not occupied by such objects,possibly after evacuating them from the collection set.

By thus culling objects referenced by reference chains that do notnecessarily originate in the basic root set, the collector can bethought of as expanding the root set to include as roots some locationsthat may not be reachable. Although incremental collection therebyleaves “floating garbage,” it can result in relatively low pause timeseven if entire collection increments are completed during respectivesingle collection intervals.

Most collectors that employ incremental collection operate in“generations,” although this is not necessary in principle. Differentportions, or generations, of the heap are subject to differentcollection policies. New objects are allocated in a “young” generation,and older objects are promoted from younger generations to older or more“mature”generations. Collecting the younger generations more frequentlythan the others yields greater efficiency because the youngergenerations tend to accumulate garbage faster; newly allocated objectstend to “die,” while older objects tend to “survive.”

But generational collection greatly increases what is effectively theroot set for a given generation. Consider FIG. 6, which depicts a heapas organized into three generations 58, 60, and 62. Assume thatgeneration 60 is to be collected. The process for this individualgeneration may be more or less the same as that described in connectionwith FIGS. 4 and 5 for the entire heap, with one major exception. In thecase of a single generation, the root set must be considered to includenot only the call stack, registers, and global variables represented byset 52 but also objects in the other generations 58 and 62, whichthemselves may contain references to objects in generation 60. Sopointers must be traced not only from the basic root set 52 but alsofrom objects within the other generations.

One could perform this tracing by simply inspecting all references inall other generations at the beginning of every collection interval, andit turns out that this approach is actually feasible in some situations.But it takes too long in other situations, so workers in this field haveemployed a number of approaches to expediting reference tracing. Oneapproach is to include so-called write barriers in the mutator process.A write barrier is code added to a write operation to record informationfrom which the collector can determine where references were written ormay have been since the last collection interval. A reference list canthen be maintained by taking such a list as it existed at the end of theprevious collection interval and updating it by inspecting onlylocations identified by the write barrier as possibly modified since thelast collection interval.

One of the many write-barrier implementations commonly used by workersin this art employs what has been referred to as the “card table.” FIG.6 depicts the various generations as being divided into smallersections, known for this purpose as “cards.” Card tables 64, 66, and 68associated with respective generations contain an entry for each oftheir cards. When the mutator writes a reference in a card, it makes anappropriate entry in the card-table location associated with that card(or, say, with the card in which the object containing the referencebegins). Most write-barrier implementations simply make a Boolean entryindicating that the write operation has been performed, although somemay be more elaborate. The mutator having thus left a record of wherenew or modified references may be, the collector can thereafter prepareappropriate summaries of that information, as will be explained in duecourse. For the sake of concreteness, we will assume that the summariesare maintained by steps that occur principally at the beginning of eachcollection interval.

Of course, there are other write-barrier approaches, such as simplyhaving the write barrier add to a list of addresses where referenceswhere written. Also, although there is no reason in principle to favorany particular number of generations, and although FIG. 6 shows three,most generational garbage collectors have only two generations, of whichone is the young generation and the other is the mature generation.Moreover, although FIG. 6 shows the generations as being of the samesize, a more-typical configuration is for the young generation to beconsiderably smaller. Finally, although we assumed for the sake ofsimplicity that collection during a given interval was limited to onlyone generation, a more-typical approach is actually to collect the wholeyoung generation at every interval but to collect the mature one lessfrequently.

Some collectors collect the entire young generation in every intervaland may thereafter perform mature-generation collection in the sameinterval. It may therefore take relatively little time to scan allyoung-generation objects remaining after young-generation collection tofind references into the mature generation. Even when such collectors douse card tables, therefore, they often do not use them for findingyoung-generation references that refer to mature-generation objects. Onthe other hand, laboriously scanning the entire mature generation forreferences to young-generation (or mature-generation) objects wouldordinarily take too long, so the collector uses the card table to limitthe amount of memory it searches for mature-generation references.

Now, although it typically takes very little time to collect the younggeneration, it may take more time than is acceptable within a singlegarbage-collection cycle to collect the entire mature generation. Sosome garbage collectors may collect the mature generation incrementally;that is, they may perform only a part of the mature generation'scollection during any particular collection cycle. Incrementalcollection presents the problem that, since the generation's unreachableobjects outside the “collection set” of objects processed during thatcycle cannot be recognized as unreachable, collection-set objects towhich they refer tend not to be, either.

To reduce the adverse effect this would otherwise have on collectionefficiency, workers in this field have employed the “train algorithm,”which FIG. 7 depicts. A generation to be collected incrementally isdivided into sections, which for reasons about to be described arereferred to as “car sections.” Conventionally, a generation'sincremental collection occurs in fixed-size sections, and a carsection's size is that of the generation portion to be collected duringone cycle.

The discussion that follows will occasionally employ the nomenclature inthe literature by using the term car instead of car section. But theliterature seems to use that term to refer variously not only to memorysections themselves but also to data structures that the train algorithmemploys to manage them when they contain objects, as well as to themore-abstract concept that the car section and managing data structurerepresent in discussions of the algorithm. So the following discussionwill more frequently use the expression car section to emphasize theactual sections of memory space for whose management the car concept isemployed.

According to the train algorithm, the car sections are grouped into“trains,” which are ordered, conventionally according to age. Forexample, FIG. 7 shows an oldest train 73 consisting of a generation 74'sthree car sections described by associated data structures 75, 76, and78, while a second train 80 consists only of a single car section,represented by structure 82, and the youngest train 84 (referred to asthe “allocation train”) consists of car sections that data structures 86and 88 represent. As will be seen below, car sections' train membershipscan change, and any car section added to a train is typically added tothe end of a train.

Conventionally, the car collected in an increment is the one addedearliest to the oldest train, which in this case is car 75. All of thegeneration's cars can thus be thought of as waiting for collection in asingle long line, in which cars are ordered in accordance with the orderof the trains to which they belong and, within trains, in accordancewith the order in which they were added to those trains.

As is usual, the way in which reachable objects are identified is todetermine whether there are references to them in the root set or in anyother object already determined to be reachable. In accordance with thetrain algorithm, the collector additionally performs a test to determinewhether there are any references at all from outside the oldest train toobjects within it. If there are not, then all cars within the train canbe reclaimed, even though not all of those cars are in the collectionset. And the train algorithm so operates that inter-car references tendto be grouped into trains, as will now be explained.

To identify references into the car from outside of it, train-algorithmimplementations typically employ “remembered sets.” As card tables are,remembered sets are used to keep track of references. Whereas acard-table entry contains information about references that theassociated card contains, though, a remembered set associated with agiven region contains information about references into that region fromlocations outside of it. In the case of the train algorithm, rememberedsets are associated with car sections. Each remembered set, such as car75's remembered set 90, lists locations in the generation that containreferences into the associated car section.

The remembered sets for all of a generation's cars are typically updatedat the start of each collection cycle. To illustrate how such updatingand other collection operations may be carried out, FIGS. 8A and 8B(together, “FIG. 8”) depict an operational sequence in a system of thetypical type mention above. That is, it shows a sequence of operationsthat may occur in a system in which the entire garbage-collected heap isdivided into two generations, namely, a young generation and an oldgeneration, and in which the young generation is much smaller than theold generation. FIG. 8 is also based on the assumption and that thetrain algorithm is used only for collecting the old generation.

Block 102 represents a period of the mutator's operation. As wasexplained above, the mutator makes a card-table entry to identify anycard that it has “dirtied” by adding or modifying a reference that thecard contains. At some point, the mutator will be interrupted forcollector operation. Different implementations employ different eventsto trigger such an interruption, but we will assume for the sake ofconcreteness that the system's dynamic-allocation routine causes suchinterruptions when no room is left in the young generation for anyfurther allocation. A dashed line 103 represents the transition frommutator operation and collector operation.

In the system assumed for the FIG. 8 example, the collector collects the(entire) young generation each time such an interruption occurs. Whenthe young generation's collection ends, the mutator operation usuallyresumes, without the collector's having collected any part of the oldgeneration. Once in a while, though, the collector also collects part ofthe old generation, and FIG. 8 is intended to illustrate such anoccasion.

When the collector's interval first starts, it first processes the cardtable, in an operation that block 104 represents. As was mentionedabove, the collector scans the “dirtied” cards for references into theyoung generation. If a reference is found, that fact is memorializedappropriately. If the reference refers to a young-generation object, forexample, an expanded card table may be used for this purpose. For eachcard, such an expanded card table might include a multi-byte array usedto summarize the card's reference contents. The summary may, forinstance, be a list of offsets that indicate the exact locations withinthe card of references to young-generation objects, or it may be a listof fine-granularity “sub-cards” within which references toyoung-generation objects may be found. If the reference refers to anold-generation object, the collector often adds an entry to theremembered set associated with the car containing that old-generationobject. The entry identifies the reference's location, or at least asmall region in which the reference can be found. For reasons that willbecome apparent, though, the collector will typically not bother toplace in the remembered set the locations of references from objects incar sections farther forward in the collection queue than thereferred-to object, i.e., from objects in older trains or in cars addedearlier to the same train.

The collector then collects the young generation, as block 105indicates. (Actually, young-generation collection may be interleavedwith the dirty-region scanning, but the drawing illustrates it forpurpose of explanation as being separate.) If a young-generation objectis referred to by a reference that card-table scanning has revealed,that object is considered to be potentially reachable, as is anyyoung-generation object referred to by a reference in the root set or inanother reachable young-generation object. The space occupied by anyyoung-generation object thus considered reachable is withheld fromreclamation. For example, it may be evacuated to a young-generationsemi-space that will be used for allocation during the next mutatorinterval. It may instead be promoted into the older generation, where itis placed into a car containing a reference to it or into a car in thelast train. Or some other technique may be used to keep the memory spaceit occupies off the system's free list. The collector then reclaims anyyoung-generation space occupied by any other objects, i.e., by anyyoung-generation objects not identified as transitively reachablethrough references located outside the young generation.

The collector then performs the train algorithm's central test, referredto above, of determining whether there are any references into theoldest train from outside of it. As was mentioned above, the actualprocess of determining, for each object, whether it can be identified asunreachable is performed for only a single car section in any cycle. Inthe absence of features such as those provided by the train algorithm,this would present a problem, because garbage structures may be largerthan a car section. Objects in such structures would therefore(erroneously) appear reachable, since they are referred to from outsidethe car section under consideration. But the train algorithmadditionally keeps track of whether there are any references into agiven car from outside the train to which it belongs, and trains' sizesare not limited. As will be apparent presently, objects not found to beunreachable are relocated in such a way that garbage structures tend tobe gathered into respective trains into which, eventually, no referencesfrom outside the train point. If no references from outside the trainpoint to any objects inside the train, the train can be recognized ascontaining only garbage. This is the test that block 106 represents. Allcars in a train thus identified as containing only garbage can bereclaimed.

The question of whether old-generation references point into the trainfrom outside of it is (conservatively) answered in the course ofupdating remembered sets; in the course of updating a car's rememberedset, it is a simple matter to flag the car as being referred to fromoutside the train. The step-106 test additionally involves determiningwhether any references from outside the old generation point into theoldest train. Various approaches to making this determination have beensuggested, including the conceptually simple approach of merelyfollowing all reference chains from the root set until those chains (1)terminate, (2) reach an old-generation object outside the oldest train,or (3) reach an object in the oldest train. In the two-generationexample, most of this work can be done readily by identifying referencesinto the collection set from live young-generation objects during theyoung-generation collection. If one or more such chains reach the oldesttrain, that train includes reachable objects. It may also includereachable objects if the remembered-set-update operation has found oneor more references into the oldest train from outside of it. Otherwise,that train contains only garbage, and the collector reclaims all of itscar sections for reuse, as block 107 indicates. The collector may thenreturn control to the mutator, which resumes execution, as FIG. 8B'sblock 108 indicates.

If the train contains reachable objects, on the other hand, thecollector turns to evacuating potentially reachable objects from thecollection set. The first operation, which block 110 represents, is toremove from the collection set any object that is reachable from theroot set by way of a reference chain that does not pass through the partof the old generation that is outside of the collection set. In theillustrated arrangement, in which there are only two generations, andthe young generation has previously been completely collected during thesame interval, this means evacuating from a collection set any objectthat (1) is directly referred to by a reference in the root set, (2) isdirectly referred to by a reference in the young generation (in which noremaining objects have been found unreachable), or (3) is referred to byany reference in an object thereby evacuated. All of the objects thusevacuated are placed in cars in the youngest train, which was newlycreated during the collection cycle. Certain of the mechanics involvedin the evacuation process are described in more detail in connectionwith similar evacuation performed, as blocks 112 and 114 indicate, inresponse to remembered-set entries.

FIG. 9 illustrates how the processing represented by block 114 proceeds.The entries identify heap regions, and, as block 116 indicates, thecollector scans the thus-identified heap regions to find references tolocations in the collection-set. As blocks 118 and 120 indicate, thatentry's processing continues until the collector finds no more suchreferences. Every time the collector does find such a reference, itchecks to determine whether, as a result of a previous entry'sprocessing, the referred-to object has already been evacuated. If it hasnot, the collector evacuates the referred-to object to a (possibly new)car in the train containing the reference, as blocks 122 and 124indicate.

As FIG. 10 indicates, the evacuation operation includes more than justobject relocation, which block 126 represents. Once the object has beenmoved, the collector places a forwarding pointer in the collection-setlocation from which it was evacuated, for a purpose that will becomeapparent presently. Block 128 represents that step. (Actually, there aresome cases in which the evacuation is only a “logical” evacuation: thecar containing the object is simply re-linked to a different logicalplace in the collection sequence, but its address does not change. Insuch cases, forwarding pointers are unnecessary.) Additionally, thereference in response to which the object was evacuated is updated topoint to the evacuated object's new location, as block 130 indicates.And, as block 132 indicates, any reference contained in the evacuatedobject is processed, in an operation that FIGS. 11A and 11B (together,“FIG. 11”) depict.

For each one of the evacuated object's references, the collector checksto see whether the location that it refers to is in the collection set.As blocks 134 and 136 indicate, the reference processing continues untilall references in the evacuated object have been processed. In themeantime, if a reference refers to a collection-set location thatcontains an object not yet evacuated, the collector evacuates thereferred-to object to the train to which the evacuated object containingthe reference was evacuated, as blocks 138 and 140 indicate.

If the reference refers to a location in the collection set from whichthe object has already been evacuated, then the collector uses theforwarding pointer left in that location to update the reference, asblock 142 indicates. Before the processing of FIG. 11, the rememberedset of the referred-to object's car will have an entry that identifiesthe evacuated object's old location as one containing a reference to thereferred-to object. But the evacuation has placed the reference in a newlocation, for which the remembered set of the referred-to object's carmay not have an entry. So, if that new location is not as far forward asthe referred-to object, the collector adds to that remembered set anentry identifying the reference's new region, as blocks 144 and 146indicate. As the drawings show, the same type of remembered-set updateis performed if the object referred to by the evacuated reference is notin the collection set.

Now, some train-algorithm implementations postpone processing of thereferences contained in evacuated collection-set objects until after alldirectly reachable collection-set objects have been evacuated. In theimplementation that FIG. 10 illustrates, though, the processing of agiven evacuated object's references occurs before the next object isevacuated. So FIG. 11's blocks 134 and 148 indicate that the FIG. 11operation is completed when all of the references contained in theevacuated object have been processed. This completes FIG. 10'sobject-evacuation operation, which FIG. 9's block 124 represents.

As FIG. 9 indicates, each collection-set object referred to by areference in a remembered-set-entry-identified location is thusevacuated if it has not been already. If the object has already beenevacuated from the referred-to location, the reference to that locationis updated to point to the location to which the object has beenevacuated. If the remembered set associated with the car containing theevacuated object's new location does not include an entry for thereference's location, it is updated to do so if the car containing thereference is younger than the car containing the evacuated object. Block150 represents updating the reference and, if necessary, the rememberedset.

As FIG. 8's blocks 112 and 114 indicate, this processing ofcollection-set remembered sets is performed initially only for entriesthat do not refer to locations in the oldest train. Those that do areprocessed only after all others have been, as blocks 152 and 154indicate.

When this process has been completed, the collection set's memory spacecan be reclaimed, as block 164 indicates, since no remaining object isreferred to from outside the collection set: any remainingcollection-set object is unreachable. The collector then relinquishescontrol to the mutator.

FIGS. 12A-12J illustrate results of using the train algorithm. FIG. 12Arepresents a generation in which objects have been allocated in nine carsections. The oldest train has four cars, numbered 1.1 through 1.4. Car1.1 has two objects, A and B. There is a reference to object B in theroot set (which, as was explained above, includes live objects in theother generations). Object A is referred to by object L, which is in thethird train's sole car section. In the generation's remembered sets 170,a reference in object L has therefore been recorded against car 1.1.

Processing always starts with the oldest train's earliest-added car, sothe garbage collector refers to car 1.1's remembered set and finds thatthere is a reference from object L into the car being processed. Itaccordingly evacuates object A to the train that object L occupies. Theobject being evacuated is often placed in one of the selected train'sexisting cars, but we will assume for present purposes that there is notenough room. So the garbage collector evacuates object A into a new carsection and updates appropriate data structures to identify it as thenext car in the third train. FIG. 12B depicts the result: a new car hasbeen added to the third train, and object A is placed in it.

FIG. 12B also shows that object B has been evacuated to a new caroutside the first train. This is because object B has an externalreference, which, like the reference to object A, is a reference fromoutside the first train, and one goal of the processing is to formtrains into which there are no further references. Note that, tomaintain a reference to the same object, object L's reference to objectA has had to be rewritten, and so have object B's reference to object Aand the inter-generational pointer to object B. In the illustratedexample, the garbage collector begins a new train for the car into whichobject B is evacuated, but this is not a necessary requirement of thetrain algorithm. That algorithm requires only that externally referencedobjects be evacuated to a newer train.

Since car 1.1 no longer contains live objects, it can be reclaimed, asFIG. 12B also indicates. Also note that the remembered set for car 2.1now includes the address of a reference in object A, whereas it did notbefore. As was stated before, remembered sets in the illustratedembodiment include only references from cars further back in the orderthan the one with which the remembered set is associated. The reason forthis is that any other cars will already be reclaimed by the time thecar associated with that remembered set is processed, so there is noreason to keep track of references from them.

The next step is to process the next car, the one whose index is 1.2.Conventionally, this would not occur until some collection cycle afterthe one during which car 1.1 is collected. For the sake of simplicity wewill assume that the mutator has not changed any references into thegeneration in the interim.

FIG. 12B depicts car 1.2 as containing only a single object, object C,and that car's remembered set contains the address of an inter-carreference from object F. The garbage collector follows that reference toobject C. Since this identifies object C as possibly reachable, thegarbage collector evacuates it from car set 1.2, which is to bereclaimed. Specifically, the garbage collector removes object C to a newcar section, section 1.5, which is linked to the train to which thereferring object F's car belongs. Of course, object F's reference needsto be updated to object C's new location. FIG. 12C depicts theevacuation's result.

FIG. 12C also indicates that car set 1.2 has been reclaimed, and car 1.3is next to be processed. The only address in car 1.3's remembered set isthat of a reference in object G. Inspection of that reference revealsthat it refers to object F. Object F may therefore be reachable, so itmust be evacuated before car section 1.3 is reclaimed. On the otherhand, there are no references to objects D and E, so they are clearlygarbage. FIG. 12D depicts the result of reclaiming car 1.3's space afterevacuating possibly reachable object F.

In the state that FIG. 12D depicts, car 1.4 is next to be processed, andits remembered set contains the addresses of references in objects K andC. Inspection of object K's reference reveals that it refers to objectH, so object H must be evacuated. Inspection of the other remembered-setentry, the reference in object C, reveals that it refers to object G, sothat object is evacuated, too. As FIG. 12E illustrates, object H must beadded to the second train, to which its referring object K belongs. Inthis case there is room enough in car 2.2, which its referring object Koccupies, so evacuation of object H does not require that object K'sreference to object H be added to car 2.2's remembered set. Object G isevacuated to a new car in the same train, since that train is wherereferring object C resides. And the address of the reference in object Gto object C is added to car 1.5's remembered set.

FIG. 12E shows that this processing has eliminated all references intothe first train, and it is an important part of the train algorithm totest for this condition. That is, even though there are references intoboth of the train's cars, those cars' contents can be recognized as allgarbage because there are no references into the train from outside ofit. So all of the first train's cars are reclaimed.

The collector accordingly processes car 2.1 during the next collectioncycle, and that car's remembered set indicates that there are tworeferences outside the car that refer to objects within it. Thosereferences are in object K, which is in the same train, and object A,which is not. Inspection of those references reveals that they refer toobjects I and J, which are evacuated.

The result, depicted in FIG. 12F, is that the remembered sets for thecars in the second train reveal no inter-car references, and there areno inter-generational references into it, either. That train's carsections therefore contain only garbage, and their memory space can bereclaimed.

So car 3.1 is processed next. Its sole object, object L, is referred tointer-generationally as well as by a reference in the fourth train'sobject M. As FIG. 12G shows, object L is therefore evacuated to thefourth train. And the address of the reference in object L to object Ais placed in the remembered set associated with car 3.2, in which objectA resides.

The next car to be processed is car 3.2, whose remembered set includesthe addresses of references into it from objects B and L. Inspection ofthe reference from object B reveals that it refers to object A, whichmust therefore be evacuated to the fifth train before car 3.2 can bereclaimed. Also, we assume that object A cannot fit in car section 5.1,so a new car 5.2 is added to that train, as FIG. 12H shows, and object Ais placed in its car section. All referred-to objects in the third trainhaving been evacuated, that (single-car) train can be reclaimed in itsentirety.

A further observation needs to be made before we leave FIG. 12G. Car3.2's remembered set additionally lists a reference in object L, so thegarbage collector inspects that reference and finds that it points tothe location previously occupied by object A. This brings up a featureof copying-collection techniques such as the typical train-algorithmimplementation. When the garbage collector evacuates an object from acar section, it marks the location as having been evacuated and leavesthe address of the object's new location. So, when the garbage collectortraces the reference from object L, it finds that object A has beenremoved, and it accordingly copies the new location into object L as thenew value of its reference to object A.

In the state that FIG. 12H illustrates, car 4.1 is the next to beprocessed. Inspection of the fourth train's remembered sets reveals nointer-train references into it, but the inter-generational scan(possibly performed with the aid of FIG. 6's card tables) revealsinter-generational references into car 4.2. So the fourth train cannotbe reclaimed yet. The garbage collector accordingly evacuates car 4.1'sreferred-to objects in the normal manner, with the result that FIG. 12Idepicts.

In that state, the next car to be processed has only inter-generationalreferences into it. So, although its referred-to objects must thereforebe evacuated from the train, they cannot be placed into trains thatcontain references to them. Conventionally, such objects are evacuatedto a train at the end of the train sequence. In the illustratedimplementation, a new train is formed for this purpose, so the result ofcar 4.2's processing is the state that FIG. 12J depicts.

Processing continues in this same fashion. Of course, subsequentcollection cycles will not in general proceed, as in the illustratedcycles, without any reference changes by the mutator and without anyaddition of further objects. But reflection reveals that the generalapproach just described still applies when such mutations occur.

In the Train algorithm, as discussed herein, trains and cars are orderedso that typically older cars are collected before younger cars. Thisordering helps alleviate a major burden, imposed by the Train algorithm,of the maintenance of per car remembered sets tracking referencesbetween objects in different cars. Because of the ordering, there needonly be tracking of references from objects in younger cars to ones inolder cars. Nonetheless, maintaining these remembered sets is costly.

It is an objective of the present invention to perform the scanning forreference locations for insertion into remembered sets on datastructures whose relevance is restricted to the collector concurrentlywith the application as much as is advantageous.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In view of the foregoing background discussion, the present inventionprovides a garbage collection method and apparatus for insertingreferences into remembered sets concurrent with operating withapplication programs. A card table is used to track dirtied (a term ofart indicating a recent change) memory sections or cards. A loadinstruction is used to locate the dirtied regions of the card table andatomic instructions are used to update those locations. The atomicinstructions as known in the art are used to update the card tablelocations in a manner that preserves the integrity of the informationduring the updating. Compare-and-Swap, CAS, is one instruction, andLoad-Locked/Store-Conditionally, LL/SC, is another pair of instructionsthat can be used for these purposes.

The modified cards are scanned and corresponding remembered setsupdated. An atomic operation is used to ensure that changes were notmade by the application during summarization. If changes wereconcurrently made, the card table contents are preserved indicating themodifications for later handling. In some embodiments, an attempt ismade to preserve as much of the summarization information as possiblewithout re-doing the summarization.

Since an application is operating in this memory area, the collectormoves on to summarize other areas of memory. If no modification weremade the collection continues as normally arranged or scheduled.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention description below refers to the accompanying drawings, ofwhich:

FIG. 1, discussed above, is a block diagram of a computer system inwhich the present invention's teachings can be practiced;

FIG. 2 as, discussed above, is a block diagram that illustrates acompiler's basic functions;

FIG. 3, discussed above, is a block diagram that illustrates amore-complicated compiler/interpreter organization;

FIG. 4, discussed above, is a diagram that illustrates a basicgarbage-collection mechanism;

FIG. 5, discussed above, is a similar diagram illustrating thatgarbage-collection approach's relocation operation;

FIG. 6, discussed above, is a diagram that illustrates agarbage-collected heap's organization into generations;

FIG. 7, discussed above, is a diagram that illustrates a generationorganization employed for the train algorithm;

FIGS. 8A and 8B, discussed above, together constitute a flow chart thatillustrates a garbage-collection interval that includes old-generationcollection;

FIG. 9, discussed above, is a flow chart that illustrates in more detailthe remembered-set processing included in FIG. 8A;

FIG. 10, discussed above, is a block diagram that illustrates in moredetail the referred-to-object evacuation that FIG. 9 includes;

FIGS. 11A and 11B, discussed above, together form a flow chart thatillustrates in more detail the FIG. 10 flow chart's step of processingevacuated objects' references;

FIGS. 12A-12J, discussed above, are diagrams that illustrate acollection scenario that can result from using the train algorithm;

FIGS. 13A and 13B together constitute a flow chart that illustrates acollection interval, as FIGS. 8A and 8B do, but illustratesoptimizations that FIGS. 8A and 8B do not include;

FIG. 14 is a diagram that illustrates example data structures that canbe employed to manage cars and trains in accordance with the trainalgorithm;

FIG. 15 is a diagram that illustrates data structures employed inmanaging different-sized car sections;

FIG. 16 is a block diagram illustrating memory cards and a correspondingcard table tracking card changes,

FIG. 17 is a diagram of bytes with particular meanings,

FIG. 18 is a block flow chart showing handling of the card tableinformation and the corresponding cards,

FIG. 19 is a block flow chart expanding the handling of a card table andthe corresponding cards, and

FIG. 20 is a block flow chart further expanding the handling of the cardtable and corresponding cards.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF AN ILLUSTRATIVE EMBODIMENT

The illustrated embodiment employs a way of implementing the trainalgorithm that is in general terms similar to the way described above.But, whereas it was tacitly assumed above that, as is conventional, onlya single car section would be collected in any given collectioninterval, the embodiment now to be discussed may collect more than asingle car during a collection interval. FIGS. 13A and 13B (together,“FIG. 13”) therefore depict a collection operation that is similar tothe one that FIG. 8 depicts, but FIG. 13 reflects the possibility ofmultiple-car collection sets and depicts certain optimizations that someof the invention's embodiments may employ.

Blocks 172, 176, and 178 represent operations that correspond to thosethat FIG. 8's blocks 102, 106, and 108 do, and dashed line 174represents the passage of control from the mutator to the collector, asFIG. 8's dashed line 104 does. For the sake of efficiency, though, thecollection operation of FIG. 13 includes a step represented by block180. In this step, the collector reads the remembered set of each car inthe collection set to determine the location of each reference into thecollection set from a car outside of it, it places the address of eachreference thereby found into a scratch-pad list associated with thetrain that contains that reference, and it places the scratch-pad listsin reverse-train order. As blocks 182 and 184 indicate, it thenprocesses the entries in all scratch-pad lists but the one associatedwith the oldest train.

Before the collector processes references in that train's scratch-padlist, the collector evacuates any objects referred to from outside theold generation, as block 186 indicates. To identify such objects, thecollector scans the root set. In some generational collectors, it mayalso have to scan other generations for references into the collectionset. For the sake of example, though, we have assumed the particularlycommon scheme in which a generation's collection in a given interval isalways preceded by complete collection of every (in this case, only one)younger generation in the same interval. If, in addition, thecollector's promotion policy is to promote all survivingyounger-generation objects into older generations, it is necessary onlyto scan older generations, of which there are none in the example; i.e.,some embodiments may not require that the young generation be scanned inthe block-186 operation.

For those that do, though, the scanning may actually involve inspectingeach surviving object in the young generation, or the collector mayexpedite the process by using card-table entries. Regardless of whichapproach it uses, the collector immediately evacuates into another trainany collection-set object to which it thereby finds an externalreference. The typical policy is to place the evacuated object into theyoungest such train. As before, the collector does not attempt toevacuate an object that has already been evacuated, and, when it doesevacuate an object to a train, it evacuates to the same train eachcollection-set object to which a reference the thus-evacuated objectrefers. In any case, the collector updates the reference to theevacuated object.

When the inter-generational references into the generation have thusbeen processed, the garbage collector determines whether there are anyreferences into the oldest train from outside that train. If not, theentire train can be reclaimed, as blocks 188 and 190 indicate.

As block 192 indicates, the collector interval typically ends when atrain has thus been collected. If the oldest train cannot be collectedin this manner, though, the collector proceeds to evacuate anycollection-set objects referred to by references whose locations theoldest train's scratch-pad list includes, as blocks 194 and 196indicate. It removes them to younger cars in the oldest train, againupdating references, avoiding duplicate evacuations, and evacuating anycollection-set objects to which the evacuated objects refer. When thisprocess has been completed, the collection set can be reclaimed, asblock 198 indicates, since no remaining object is referred to fromoutside the collection set: any remaining collection-set object isunreachable. The collector then relinquishes control to the mutator.

We now turn to a problem presented by popular objects. FIG. 12F showsthat there are two references to object L after the second train iscollected. So references in both of the referring objects need to beupdated when object L is evacuated. If entry duplication is to beavoided, adding remembered-set entries is burdensome. Still, the burdenin not too great in that example, since only two referring objects areinvolved. But some types of applications routinely generate objects towhich there are large numbers of references. Evacuating a single one ofthese objects requires considerable reference updating, so it can bequite costly.

One way of dealing with this problem is to place popular objects intheir own cars. To understand how this can be done, consider FIG. 14'sexemplary data structures, which represent the type of information acollector may maintain in support of the train algorithm. To emphasizetrains' ordered nature, FIG. 14 depicts such a structure 244 asincluding pointers 245 and 246 to the previous and next trains, althoughtrain order could obviously be maintained without such a mechanism. Carsare ordered within trains, too, and it may be a convenient to assignnumbers for this purpose explicitly and keep the next number to beassigned in the train-associated structure, as field 247 suggests. Inany event, some way of associating cars with trains is necessary, andthe drawing represents this by fields 248 and 249 that point tostructures containing data for the train's first and last cars.

FIG. 14 depicts one such structure 250 as including pointers 251, 252,and 253 to structures that contain information concerning the train towhich the car belongs, the previous car in the train, and the next carin the train. Further pointers 254 and 255 point to the locations in theheap at which the associated car section begins and ends, whereaspointer 256 points to the place at which the next object can be added tothe car section.

As will be explained in more detail presently, there is a standardcar-section size that is used for all cars that contain more than oneobject, and that size is great enough to contain a relatively largenumber of average-sized objects. But some objects can be too big for thestandard size, so a car section may consist of more than one of thestandard-size memory sections. Structure 250 therefore includes a field257 that indicates how many standard-size memory sections there are inthe car section that the structure manages.

On the other hand, that structure may in the illustrated embodiment beassociated not with a single car section but rather with astandard-car-section-sized memory section that contains more than one(special-size) car section. When an organization of this type is used,structures like structure 250 may include a field 258 that indicateswhether the heap space associated with the structure is used (1)normally, as a car section that can contain multiple objects, or (2)specially, as a region in which objects are stored one to a car in amanner that will now be explained by reference to the additionalstructures that FIG. 15 illustrates.

To deal specially with popular objects, the garbage collector may keeptrack of the number of references there are to each object in thegeneration being collected. Now, the memory space 260 allocated to anobject typically begins with a header 262 that contains varioushousekeeping information, such as an identifier of the class to whichthe object belongs. One way to keep track of an object's popularity isfor the header to include a reference-count field 264 right in theobject's header. That field's default value is zero, which is its valueat the beginning of the remembered-set processing in a collection cyclein which the object belongs to the collection set. As the garbagecollector processes the collection-set cars' remembered sets, itincrements the object's reference-count field each time it finds areference to that object, and it tests the resultant value to determinewhether the count exceeds a predetermined popular-object threshold. Ifthe count does exceed the threshold, the collector removes the object toa “popular side yard” if it has not done so already.

Specifically, the collector consults a table 266, which points to linkedlists of normal-car-section-sized regions intended to contain popularobjects. Preferably, the normal car-section size is considerably largerthan the 30 to 60 bytes that has been shown by studies to be an averageobject size in typical programs. Under such circumstances, it would be asignificant waste of space to allocate a whole normal-sized car sectionto an individual object. For reasons that will become apparent below,collectors that follow the teachings of the present invention tend toplace popular objects into their own, single-object car sections. So thenormal-car-section-sized regions to which table 266 points are to betreated as specially divided into car sections whose sizes are moreappropriate to individual-object storage.

To this end, table 266 includes a list of pointers to linked lists ofstructures associated with respective regions of that type. Each list isassociated with a different object-size range. For example, consider thelinked list pointed to by table 266's section pointer 268. Pointer 268is associated with a linked list of normal-car-sized regions organizedinto n-card car sections. Structure 267 is associated with one suchregion and includes fields 270 and 272 that point to the previous andnext structure in a linked list of such structures associated withrespective regions of n-card car sections. Car-section region 269, withwhich structure 267 is associated, is divided into n-card car sectionssuch as section 274, which contains object 260.

More specifically, the garbage collector determines the size of thenewly popular object by, for instance, consulting the class structure towhich one of its header entries points. It then determines the smallestpopular-car-section size that can contain the object. Having thusidentified the appropriate size, it follows table 266's pointerassociated with that size to the list of structures associated withregions so divided. It follows the list to the first structureassociated with a region that has constituent car sections left.

Let us suppose that the first such structure is structure 267. In thatcase, the collector finds the next free car section by following pointer276 to a car data structure 278. This data structure is similar to FIG.14's structure 250, but in the illustrated embodiment it is located inthe garbage-collected heap, at the end of the car section with which itis associated. In a structure-278 field similar to structure 250's field279, the collector places the next car number of the train to which theobject is to be assigned, and it places the train's number in a fieldcorresponding to structure 250's field 251. The collector also storesthe object at the start of the popular-object car section in whichstructure 278 is located. In short, the collector is adding a new car tothe object's train, but the associated car section is asmaller-than-usual car section, sized to contain the newly popularobject efficiently.

The aspect of the illustrated embodiment's data-structure organizationthat FIGS. 14 and 15 depict provides for special-size car sectionswithout detracting from rapid identification of the normal-sized car towhich a given object belongs. Conventionally, all car sections have beenthe same size, because doing so facilitates rapid car identification.Typically, for example, the most-significant bits of the differencebetween the generation's base address and an object's address are usedas an offset into a car-metadata table, which contains pointers to carstructures associated with the (necessarily uniform-size) memorysections associated with those most-significant bits. FIGS. 14 and 15'sorganization permits this general approach to be used while providing atthe same time for special-sized car sections. The car-metadata table canbe used as before to contain pointers to structures associated withmemory sections whose uniform size is dictated by the number of addressbits used as an index into that table.

In the illustrated embodiment, though, the structures pointed to by themetadata-table pointers contain fields exemplified by fields 258 of FIG.14's structure 250 and FIG. 15's structure 267. These fields indicatewhether the structure manages only a single car section, as structure250 does. If so, the structure thereby found is the car structure forthat object. Otherwise, the collector infers from the object's addressand the structure'section_size field 284 the location of the carstructure, such as structure 278, that manages the object's special-sizecar section, and it reads the object's car number from that structure.This inference is readily drawn if every such car structure ispositioned at the same offset from one of its respective car section'sboundaries. In the illustrated example, for instance, every such carsection's car structure is placed at the end of the car section, so itstrain and car-number fields are known to be located at predeterminedoffsets from the end of the car section.

Applications employ “write barriers,” well known in the art, to notifythe collector of changes made to objects in the garbage-collected heap.Techniques typically include the use of card tables or the use of someform of logging structure, such as sequential store buffers. Forpurposes of simplification, the following discussion concentrates on useof card tables. However, the approach of summarizing modified referencelocations concurrently with the application is applicable to these otherapproaches to implementing write-barriers.

Referring back, FIG. 6 shows card tables arrange for each of threegenerations with a single-byte card table entry associated with eachcard (a section of the generation memory). As discussed above, thecontents of the card table may be a binary indication placed by themutator that a write operation has modified a reference location in thecorresponding card. In other embodiments, the card table may containoffsets that indicate write-modified reference locations, and willthereby track locations that have been modified by the application.

FIG. 16 shows a card table 302 with eight bytes corresponding to aregion of memory consisting of eight cards, one byte for each card. Oneissue for modern processors that operate on word lengths of four oreight bytes is the efficiency for handling a granularity of a singlebyte. Another issue is synchronizing and handshaking between thecollector and the application.

In order to facilitate, usually minimizing, the synchronization andhandshaking that might be necessary between the collector and theapplication, atomic operations like “compare-and-swap” (CAS) are used.“Atomic” is a well known term in the art, referring to the fact that noother store can be performed between the load and store elements of an“atomic” instruction. With respect to the atomic CAS, once begun, noother processor can access the memory location specified until the CASoperation (if any) has completed and is potentially visible to all otherprocessors in the system. The preferred CAS operates on multiple bytes,typically four to eight.

As known in the art, CAS may take several forms, one form is: CAS(addr,old_value, new_value). This instruction will compare the contents ofaddr with old_value, and if they agree CAS is said to have succeeded,and the contents of “addr” is replaced with new_value. If the contentsof addr and old_value do not agree, the CAS fails indicating some otherprocess has modified the contents of the location. In either case ofsuccess or failure, the CAS operation returns the contents of thelocation.

The operation of the CAS (compare and swap) instruction above may bemore easily understood by the following short noted code:

CAS(addr, old_value, new_value) {

-   -   val := *addr    -   If (val == old_value) {        -   *addr := new_value;    -   }    -   return val;

}

As mentioned above, CAS instructions operate on full word lengths of 4or 8 bytes (32 or 64 bits) and not directly at the byte level. However,by setting up appropriate before and after values for the CAS word,modification to objects can be tracked at the byte level in the cardtable. In this preferred embodiment, FIG. 16, eight 512-byte memorycards 303 and the corresponding eight card table bytes 302 arediscussed. FIG. 17 shows an 8 byte sequence 310 from the card tablewhere the first two bytes 304 have been “dirtied” or modified toindicate changes in the associated cards by the mutator. In thisinstance consider all the bits in each dirtied byte are zeros, andundirtied bytes contain all ones indicating empty. For embodimentsoutlined in FIGS. 18 and 19, we need to distinguish entries in the cardtable indicating dirtied references that we are currently scanning fromthose entries that may be dirtied after we begin summarizing cardsassociated with a particular sequence of entries. To this end, we alsoreserve a SCAN value (254), if needed, that will indicate those dirtiedentries we are currently scanning. In one preferred embodiment, theother values (1 to 254 when not reserving a SCAN value, or 1 to 253 whensuch a SCAN value is reserved) in the card table byte are used to recordoffsets of references in the memory card to younger generations. In oneexample, if there is one reference to an object in a younger generation,the byte values other than 0 and 255 (expressed in decimal) indicate anoffset from the start of the memory card of a reference to the youngergeneration object. In the present invention, the atomic CAS operation isused on the 8 byte card table word 302 without locks thereby allowingconcurrent modification by an application. The approach is to use a CASoperation on the card table word to isolate dirtied cards, and then toscan and reconcile the references in the associated card. The CAS isthen used to ensure that the application made no concurrent changes. Butif there were concurrent changes, the card table word is left alone oran attempt is made to reconcile the newly scanned summary informationwith the modified state, and the collector moves on to other cards inorder to avoid working on the same card table entries where theapplication is operating.

FIGS. 18, 19, and 20 are alternative flow charts illustrating thepresent invention. Each assumes that the collector performs a CAS 310 onthe card table word 206 and finds the two bytes 304 containing zerosindicating the two corresponding cards have been dirtied 312. Since theprocessing of dirtied card table entries revert the dirtied entries toempty, in this example consider all the other bytes 306 to be empty andfilled with ones.

FIG. 18 starts at the beginning of the card table 320. If the card tablehas been fully processed 322, the system has completed a passsummarizing potentially modified locations. But if the card table hasnot yet been completely processed 324, the next eight bytes are loaded326 in a location V for processing. The bytes are checked for zeros orSCAN values 328 indicating dirtied memory cards. If any of the checkedbytes indicate the presence of dirtied memory cards, a copy of the eightbytes is made that is identical to the previously read eight bytesexcept any that are zero (indicating a dirty card) are changed to be theSCAN value. A CAS is performed to change the eight entries in the cardtable from the previously read values to the new values. If successful,the new entries have replaced the old ones in the card table 331 and theentries with SCAN values may now be scanned. Having succeeded the newsequence including SCAN values becomes the current value of V′. If theCAS fails 333, additional entries in the eight-byte sequence of the cardtable must have been marked as dirty by the application, and so, toavoid summarizing references the application is currently modifying,control is returned to inquiring if the card table is exhausted. Thecorresponding dirtied memory cards are scanned 330, remembered sets areupdated, and references from younger generations are summarized. Whenthe dirtied memory cards have been processed the contents of the word V′are updated into location V″. The locations of V′ and V″ are processedwith a CAS instruction 332 and control returns to see if the card tablehas been completed or exhausted. It does not matter if the CAS succeedsor fails, because any dirtied locations that occurred while the memorycards were being processed are retained in the card table for a futurecollection. If the CAS succeeds then all of the memory cards whose cardtable entries had been marked dirty prior to the scanning of the cardshave had their entries updated to reflect the results of the scanning.In either case the collector continues on as before. FIG. 19 isidentical to the operations described for FIG. 18 up to the point offorming a V″ 330. A CAS is performed 332 from location V′ to V″ (in thisterminology V′ is the old value and V″ is the new value) where, if theCAS succeeds 334, then no modifications were made during the processingof the card table and updating references. However, if the CAS fails336, since modifications were made concurrently, then for each newlydirtied byte in the V′ the corresponding byte in V″ is dirtied byplacing a zero in that byte. In this manner the newly dirtied bytes arerecorded while maintaining the just-performed summarization for cardtable entries that have not just been dirtied; the newly dirtied entrieswill eventually be processed during a later collection interval.

FIG. 20 is yet another preferred embodiment. In this flow chart, items320, 322, 324, 326 and 328 operate as in FIGS. 18 and 19. However, ifthere are dirtied bytes in V 340, V′ is formed by replacing the dirtiedbytes in V with empty values (ones) and pre-serving the other bytevalues 342. So bytes having zeros in V are replaced with ones in thecorresponding bytes in V.′ A CAS operation 344 from V to V′ is performedand if it fails 346 further processing of these cards will wait untillater and operation returns to interrogating the other entries from thecard table 323.

If the CAS succeeds 348, the dirtied memory cards as determined from Vare scanned 350 and remembered sets updated and younger generationreferences summarized with the result being placed in a new eight byteV.″ If the contents of V′ are identical to V″ 352 then no furtherprocessing is needed on these memory cards. If they are not identical354 a CAS is performed 356 from V′ to V″ returning V.′ If this CASsucceeds the operation returns to interrogating the card table, but ifit fails for each dirty byte in V′ the corresponding byte in V″ isdirtied 358, and operation returns to item 353 where V′ is checked tosee if it matches V.″

Other atomic operations may be used above instead of the CAS operation.Some modern processors, for example, provide a pair of instructions,load-locked (LL) and store-conditional (SC) that serve the same purposeas, and instead of, the CAS operation. On these processors, LL/SC aresuitable for implementing the invention. Similarly, more limited atomicinstructions (such as the SPARCV9 architecture'sload-store-unsigned-byte (LDSTUB) instruction that atomically reads abyte and changes its contents to all ones) may be used for selectivelysetting indicators to empty if the empty state is represented by allones.

Concurrent scanning may be performed either by a dedicated set ofthreads performing collection work concurrently with the application orby the application's threads, themselves, at points in their operationsuch as when allocating memory or when a certain number of writes haveoccurred in a particular thread. Concurrent scanning may be initiatedwhen a particular amount of memory has been allocated in one or moregenerations, when a certain amount of time has elapsed, or as part of aconcurrent phase of collection of a particular generation, such as onebased on the Train algorithm, wherein the collection of the generationrequires that modified reference locations be examined.

1. A method for tracking and summarizing modified references in agarbage collector operating concurrently with applications, wherein ageneration is partitioned in to a group of memory sections and whereinthere are card table indicators associated with the group of memorysections storing if an application has written into or dirtied one ormore of the memory sections, the method comprising the steps of: findingand atomically interrogating the indicators and finding at least onedirty indicator, resetting the at least one found dirty indicator toindicate not dirty, scanning the at least one dirtied memory section andupdating the card table indicators or remembered sets of correspondingobjects, wherein updating the card table indicators or remembered setsof corresponding objects comprises storing, in the card table indicatorsor remembered sets, at least one location of referencing objects thatreference the corresponding objects, atomically interrogating theindicators again, and if none are dirty moving on to collect a nextscheduled group of memory sections, and if at least one indicator isdirty, preserving the indicators as just interrogated before moving onto another group of memory sections distant from the next scheduledgroup.
 2. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step ofpreserving information of references to a one younger generation.
 3. Themethod of claim 1 wherein the step of atomic interrogating comprisesexecuting an instruction selected from the groups consisting of acompare-and-swap, a load-store-unsigned-byte, and the pair ofinstructions, load-locked and store-conditional.
 4. The method of claim1 wherein the step of resetting of the dirty indicators comprisessetting the dirty indicator to empty before scanning.
 5. The method ofclaim 1 wherein a dirty indicator contains all zeros and an emptyindicator contains all ones.
 6. The method of claim 1 wherein eachindicator comprises a byte.
 7. The method of claim 1 wherein the memorysections are defined as cards and the indicators comprise a card tableof bytes that correspond to the memory cards.
 8. A computer system fortracking and summarizing modified references in a garbage collectoroperating concurrently with applications, wherein a generation ispartitioned in to a group of memory sections and wherein there are cardtable indicators associated with the group of memory sections storing ifan application has written into or dirtied one or more of the memorysections, the system comprising: means for finding and atomicallyinterrogating the indicators and finding at least one dirty indicator,means for resetting the at least one found dirty indicator to indicatenot dirty, means for scanning the at least one dirtied memory sectionand updating the card table indicators or remembered sets ofcorresponding objects, wherein updating the card table indicators orremembered sets of corresponding objects comprises storing, in the cardtable indicators or remembered sets, at least one location ofreferencing objects that reference the corresponding objects, means foratomically interrogating the indicators again, and if none are dirtymoving on to collect a next scheduled group of memory sections, and ifat least one indicator is dirty, means for preserving the indicators asjust interrogated before moving on to another group of memory sectionsdistant from the next scheduled group.
 9. The system of claim 8 furthercomprising means for preserving information of references to a oneyounger generation.
 10. The system of claim 8 wherein the means foratomically interrogating comprise an instruction selected from thegroups consisting of a compare-and-swap, and load-store-unsigned-byte,and the pair of instructions, load-locked and store-conditional.
 11. Thesystem of claim 8 wherein the means for resetting the dirty indicatorscomprise means for setting the dirty indicators to empty beforescanning.
 12. The system of claim 8 wherein a dirty indicator containsall zeros and an empty indicator contains all ones.
 13. The system ofclaim 8 wherein each indicator comprises a byte.
 14. The system of claim8 wherein the memory sections are defined as cards and the indicatorscomprise a card table of bytes that correspond to the memory cards. 15.A computer readable media comprising: the computer readable mediacontaining instructions for execution in a processor for the practice ofa method for tracking and summarizing modified references in a garbagecollector operating concurrently with applications, wherein a generationis partitioned in to a group of memory sections and wherein there arecard table indicators associated with the group of memory sectionsstoring if an application has written into or dirtied one or more of thememory sections, the method comprising the steps of: finding andatomically interrogating the indicators and finding at least one dirtyindicator, resetting the at least one found dirty indicator to indicatenot dirty, scanning the at least one dirtied memory section and updatingthe card table indicators or remembered sets of corresponding objects,wherein updating the card table indicators or remembered sets ofcorresponding objects comprises storing, in the card table indicators orremembered sets, at least one location of referencing objects thatreference the corresponding objects, atomically interrogating theindicators again, and if non are dirty moving on to collect a nextscheduled group of memory sections, and if at least on indicator isdirty, preserving the indicators as just interrogated before moving onto another group of memory sections distant from the next scheduledgroup.
 16. The computer readable media of claim 15 further comprisingmedia containing instructions for the practice of the step of preservinginformation of references from at least one younger generation.
 17. Thecomputer readable media of claim 15 wherein the step of atomicallyinterrogating comprises executing an instruction selected form thegroups consisting of a compare-and-swap, and load-store-unsigned-byte,and the pair of instructions, load-locked and store-conditional.
 18. Thecomputer readable media of claim 15 wherein the step of resetting of thedirty indicators comprises setting the dirty indicators to empty beforescanning.
 19. The computer readable media of claim 15 wherein a dirtyindicator contains all zeros and an empty indicator contains all ones.20. The computer readable media of claim 15 wherein the indicatorscomprise a byte.
 21. The computer readable media of claim 15 wherein thememory sections are defined as cards and the indicators comprise a cardtable of bytes that correspond to the memory cards.